Saturday, November 10, 2007

It coincides with the rising price of oil and the falling price of bucks. Three GOP administrations, Reagan, Bush Sr., Bush Jr., have presided over three pernicious trends: a falling dollar, the US loss of manufacturing preeminence, the decline of the US domestic oil industry. The sum of all three trends equals the loss of US empire. The policies of three GOP administrations have not merely failed to reverse the trends, they birthed them and made them worse with ideology, bigotry and incompetence. Those who called a new Bush regime a "banana republic" during the 2000 election debacle could not have known how prescient they had been. All has come true. The "empire" is lost.

The dollar has dropped 12 percent since the start of the year. My own sources --European bankers --tell me the dollar will continue to fall until the US has what they have termed a "credible" regime and credible leadership. Smart money all over the world is dumping the dollar for the Euro. Until Bush is retired, the American people will continue to pay for his incompetence and his lawlessness. Bush is content to finance the trade deficit on the backs of American consumers.

At the very root of the problem is the fact that in 2004, the US topped the list of oil importing nations with imports of 11.8 million barrels of oil per day. That's more than the next three --China, German, and North Korea --combined. The problem is not only oil. The US Department of Commerce reports that the US "trade deficit" --our total exports vs our total imports --has increased 18% from 2004 to a record $726 billion in 2005. US dependence on oil is responsible, says the US commerce department, for some two-thirds of the increase in the US trade deficit in 2005.

Technically, price hikes due to trade imbalance is not inflation but to a consumer trying to make ends meet with a dollar that buys less and less, what difference does it make?

There are two sides to any exchange rate: Europe's prospects matter as well as America's. In 2006 the Euro area looks likely to grow at its fastest pace for six years. That its GDP growth is modest by American standards, largely because of its slower population growth, is not the point: what matters is that this year it has surprised the soothsayers time and again. That has lifted its currency, and not just against the dollar. A euro now buys more yen than at any time since the single currency was created.

So --when a European financial expert tells me that more and more people are dumping dollars for Euros, Americans would be well-advised to pay attention. It was not so long ago, after all, that the American right wing was advocating a boycott of French wines and "French Fries". What a ludicrous and pathetic spectacle that was! There is a sick, sophomoric mentality in America that likes to coin stupid terms like Islamo-fascism and Euro-trash. Both terms are "designer" red flag terms chosen by the GOP for their appeal to bigotry and jingoism. The US was even at that time a net importing nation of almost everything, in no position to terrify other nations with comic opera threats based upon the misconception that the US had not yet embarked upon an inexorable slide into third world status.

The unkindest cut of all is the Democratic sell out to the GOP! The result is the GOP has now "auctioned off" the office of President of the United States, an eventuality embodied in Mussolini's term: corporatism. Let's put it another way: the apparatus of the US government is now "owned" by rich, elite corporate interests who pay for the campaigns (bread and circuses), pay for the candidates, pay for the legislation they want and need to rape the environment, dominate the world's natural resources to include oil while enslaving the middle and lower classes.

Something similar occurred on March 28th, 193 AD, when the Praetorian guards, literally, sold the Roman empire to the wealthy senator Didius Julianus for the bargain price of 6250 drachmas. I haven't tried to buy drachmas (lately) but it sounds like a bargain compared to the absurdly high prices that are paid by US corporations for control of the US Presidency, indeed, the US government. Our modern day "Didius" has fared better than Julianus.

A magnificent feast was prepared by his order, and he amused himself until a very late hour, with dice, and the performances of Pylades, a celebrated dancer. Yet it was observed that after the crowd of flatterers dispersed, and left him to darkness, solitude, and terrible reflection, he passed a sleepless night; revolving most probably in his mind his own rash folly, the fate of his virtuous predecessor, and the doubtful and dangerous tenure of an empire, which had not been acquired by merit, but purchased by money.

An important point must be made here. Gibbon reports that Julianus paid for the Roman Empire in "drachmas". "Drachmas" denotes Greek currency. At that time, the basic unit of currency in Ancient Rome was a bronze coin called an as or aes. A sestertius, another bronze coin, was worth four asses. A silver coin, the denarius, was worth 16 asses. [I will not go there!]

If Gibbon is correct, it is an indication that Rome, by that time in decline, had suffered a catastrophic devaluation of its coinage. Even now "real" money is considered by some to be "gold" if anything at all has intrinsic value. That Didius Julianus would pay in Greek currency, not Roman, indicates to me that the smart money had already dumped the as, the asses, and the sestertius for drachmas. At last, bronze would seem to have little intrinsic value as "real" money unless you had enough of it to melt down for public statuary. I would wager that only very wealthy Roman aristocracy possessed denarius, which they might have held against the complete collapse of bronze coins.

Kucinich Believes We MUST Impeach. He's right!

Part Deaux

Dennis Kucinich is correct in describing a "race to the bottom", a phrase that describes well the US decline under GOP domination and incompetence. All but Bush's increasingly tiny elite have financed Bush's on-going folly. A falling dollar is a market response to a balance of trade imbalance, a long-term decline in US exports begun, I believe, with the GOP administration of Richard Nixon.

Most economists will tell you that for most of some 50 years, the US enjoyed an economic pre-eminence if not dominance characterized by strong domestic industries, notably steel and automobile manufacturing. Since important discoveries in Southeast Texas and, later, West Texas, the US was, for awhile, the world's leading oil producing nation.

As US dominance of world supplies began to slip, "terrorism" grew worse. [ See chart at this link. ] I recently provoked the ire of the Heritage Foundation by stating and proving --to the foundation's chagrin --the simple truth: Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes. More than enough stats make an equally compelling case about crime: crime is always worse under GOP regimes. That this should turn out to be the case may have something to do with the fact that since 1980, unemployment, as well as terrorism, is always worse under GOP regimes.

Based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey.

I don't believe in GOP coincidence theories. There are reasons for the sorry state of nation and state. GOP policies are injurious to the nation's fiscal health, its security, and the well-being of US citizens. The GOP is endemically corrupt and dishonest. I have stated and will repeat: the GOP is not a political party is it a criminal conspiracy not unlike that described by St. Thomas More in the England of Henry VIII.

...so God help me, I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth. They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely, without fear of losing, that they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labour of the poor for as little money as may be.

There is a reason "terrorism" is worse under GOP regimes. As an Iranian diplomat told me in Houston almost one year ago, oil is a curse. He was not alone. Many "industry-watchers" now use the term "curse" to refer to the nature of oil exploitation that democracy, public institutions, and civil liberties are often retarded because of it. Civil liberties are most often dispensed with altogether.

Oil wealth concentrates at the top. People in Venezuela, Nigeria, and Azerbaijan enjoy few benefits of oil production their countries. We now see in the US the unseemly spectacle that other nations have always known, that is, ruthless factions scrapping for control and riches.

What is needed is a radically different approach. A recent report quotes British energy economist David Fleming:

Anticipated supply shortages could lead easily to disturbing scenes of mass unrest as witnessed in Burma this month [2006]. For government, industry and the wider public, just muddling through is not an option any more as this situation could spin out of control and turn into a complete meltdown of society.

--British Economist David Fleming in Crude Oil: The Supply Outlook, Report to the Energy Watch Group, October 2007

We may have already entered the melt-down phase. For too long, Americans were just barely aware that the price they paid for gasoline was about one-third the price Europeans paid. But you have to credit the GOP with resourcefulness. The Bush administration delivered a message to the faithful: the war in Iraq would result in lower prices even as Bush cited every other reason for waging war. To assert that oil was behind Bush's war of aggression was tantamount to treason. It was unpatriotic. It was enough to get you pilloried and ostracized. Every SUV sported a flag.

Many worry about a "hard landing". Inflation and interest rates rise as the dollar falls. A collapsing dollar threatens to make of the US a third world nation, a "banana Republican" nation, if you will. Americans had grown accustomed to the accoutrements of empire. Oil and the lifestyle it afforded was cheap. The rest of the world had a stake in keeping us afloat. After all, they wished to export to the US. That will be impossible should the dollar collapse.

Per capita oil production peaked in the 1970s. Globalization was supposed to make us rich even as it lifted millions in the "third world" out of poverty and hunger. This has not worked out as planned. The Kucinich take on all that is correct. Recently, the one-two punch of corporatization and globalization has undermined US welfare even as it threatens to end in a global crisis of our making.

"Imagine being sent forward in time from 1967 to 2007. Instead of gas costing 25 cents a gallon, it's $2.50. A decent home, intead of costing $15,000, costs $250,000 or more. Imagine your shock that the average American family owes $9000 on their credit cards. Imagine entering a society where less than 2% of the cars on the road are owned by those that drive them, and less than 1% of the homes are owned by the people who live in them. Welcome to the debt based slave state of America in 2007. It is all symbolic of how the globalists have America right where they want it, and are eager to finish it off. As the dollar continues losing strength, what will this mean to the world?"

Friday, November 09, 2007

...before Bush starts World War III! Word is Israel is planning to strike Iran. That takes the heat off Bush while giving him the war he wants in the Middle East. Scenario: Israel strikes Iran. [See:Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran] Iran retaliates. The US joins Israel and Bush get his jollies watching mushroom clouds from afar! Gog Magog, my ass! Bush is psychotic and so are his clients.

Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.

The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.

The debate about whether "waterboarding" is or is not "torture" is another GOP red herring. Waterboarding was practiced by the Spanish Inquisition precisely because it was torture! Anyone who denies waterboarding is torture should prove it's not by publicly submitting themselves to it. That just might end another stupid obfuscation by the GOP. Then again, it doesn't really matter what it's called --especially by the liars of Bush's illegitimate regime. By any defintion, it is a violation of Due Process of Law and the various international conventions to which the US is bound. At last, waterboarding is only one of numerous atrocities carried out at Abu Ghraib, one of numerous US gulags. There is no evidence that US practices --in secret --have changed in response to exposes by Seymour Hersh et al. Chances are, as long as Bush continues to stink up the White House, the US is, as we write, carrying out a program of US sponsored, cold-blooded murder, torture and other crimes at taxpayer expense. Count on it!

I have yet to find anything in the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or the various treaties to which the US is bound by law and convention that gives anyone in the US --including persons who call themselves "President" --a right to violate the persons of anyone. There are numerous laws which bind the US to the Geneva Convention despite unconstitutional attempts by both Bush and Congress to exempt Bush from Geneva but only after he had already violated it! The statute, in effect at the time Bush committed the crime, makes Bush a war criminal, subject to prosecution for capital crimes. Congress may change the law but the Constitution forbids they "back date it".

No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

--Article 1, US Constitution

Now --can we please get on with the capital crimes trial of George W. Bush?

Bush is a Bigger Threat Than "Terrorists"!!

The charges against Rumsfeld are a good first step! My goal is to see the lot of them in the dock ---Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Ashcroft!!! Americans: let me put this bluntly. The Bush administration is not a legitimate administration. It is a crime syndicate, in office because the GOP helped them steal two elections. Being illegitimate, nothing done by this gang is legal or has the force of law. Let me put this yet another way: a criminal occupies the White House and presumes to rule by decree. In the words of Che, the peace must be considered "already broken".

The World Wide Campaign toBring Bush's War Criminals to Trial

Bush's arrest for his seemingly endless list of crimes and outrages is long overdue.

The Movement to Bring Bush to Justice

The right not to have one's person violated is inviolate. Bush has clearly committed crimes against humanity. There is no evidence, that anyone tortured by George "Torguemada" Bush or his minions in crime, has ever been connected with terror at any time, in any way. There is absolutely no evidence that torture has ever been effective in any way at any time. Clearly --anyone who is tortured will tell whatever story is sought. Richard Topcliffe --during the reign of Elizabeth I --most certainly succeeded only in getting bogus information from persons desparate to escape unbearable atrocities. It is hard not to conclude that Bush prefers to torture outside the law, beyond public scrutiny.

Show me some evidence! Show me a single "terrorist" that Bushco has ever brought to justice! Show me something other than bullshit!

Newly confirmed Attorney General Michael Mukasey will not rein in President Bush, who views himself as having the nearly unchecked executive power of a monarch, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) says.

"Are we just going to have another attorney general that's just going to kowtow to the king -- the president. I'm sorry I get those terms kinda confused here when I'm talking about Bush; I don't know if he's king or president," Harkin told his colleagues from the Senate floor Thursday.

"According to the last attorney general (Bush) was king, and maybe this one believes the same thing, he can do whatever he wants to," Harkin continued. "But even in 1215, the King of England was held to the standard of habeas corpus. I guess we want to turn the clock back to before the Magna Carta."

Harkin spoke shortly before the Senate voted to confirm Mukasey as attorney general, after the nominee weathered criticism of his refusal to declare waterboarding illegal torture. The Iowa Democrat criticized that position and the nominees refusal to commit to the notion that detainees in the war on terror -- including American citizens -- deserve habeas corpus guarantees, which require that anyone in captivity be charged with a crime or released. ...

And --today --we learned that the cowardly Democrats have confirmed yet another "torturer" as Atty General. Democrats, this is not good enough. How about the American people boycott this election and hold an alternative election? How about the people form a legitimate government under the law? At present, a lawless gang occupies Washington. What do the Democrats in Washington propose to do about it. I learned early in my broadcasting career that one was either a part of a solution or part of the problem. The cowardly Demos are quickly becoming a part of the problem, if not co-conspirators!

The AP reports, "Under pressure to support the troops but end the war, House Democrats said Thursday they would send President Bush $50 billion for combat operations on the condition that he begin withdrawing troops from Iraq." The proposal, "similar to one Bush vetoed earlier this year, would identify a goal of ending combat entirely by December 2008."

The Politico notes Speaker Pelosi "told reporters yesterday that the new proposal "would leave a small force in the country to pursue Al Qaeda, protect US interests and train Iraqi security forces." The New York Times says the plan "is certain to be opposed in the House by many Republicans as well as some strongly antiwar Democrats who want tougher restrictions on the president." The Hill notes Republicans "attacked Democrats for going to the well once again with votes calling for a withdrawal of troops." The measure "also caught many Democrats off guard. In the early afternoon, most legislators interviewed said they hadn't seen the legislation, even some who were actively trying to obtain a copy." ...

I am unimpressed! Democrats could have ended this war but haven't. The attitude is typified by Hilary who obviously believes that "Anti-war nut jobs" have no place to go.

In the meantime, it's time for Bush's criminal regime to put up or shut up! It's time Democrats grew a spine! It's time that the people of the US overthrew this government and replaced it with a lawful one under the Constitution.

In the meantime, Democrats have helped Bush get another torturer appointed to Attorney General. Bush will not have improved his horrible, criminal record with his appointment of 66 year old Michael Mukasy can be expected to follow the the example set by John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, two liars remembered for their contempt for the laws they swore to enforce and uphold. Congress has failed to find redemption.

Mukasey, 66, a former federal judge from New York, told senators he considers waterboarding "repugnant," but he could not categorically say whether the technique amounts to torture, which U.S. and international law bans.

(CBS) Waterboarding, a controversial interrogation technique that simulates drowning, dates back to at least the Spanish Inquisition, and has been used some of the world's cruelest dictatorships, according to Human Rights Watch.

Forms of waterboarding vary but generally consist of immobilizing an individual on his or her back - head inclined downward - and pouring water over the face to induce the sensation of drowning.

Other techniques include dunking prisoners head-first into water, as was used by Chadian military forces in the mid 1980s. The Khmer Rouge, responsible for the deaths of approximately 1.5 million Cambodians during the 1970s, strapped victims on inclined boards, with feet raised and head lowered, and covered their faces with cloth or cellophane. Water then was poured over their mouths to stimulate drowning.

Waterboarding, long considered a form of torture by the United States, produces a gag reflex and makes the victim believe death is imminent. The technique leaves no visible physical damage.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, considers waterboarding a form of torture. McCain has been quoted as saying that waterboarding is "no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank."

Dennis Kucinich didn't vote for the 2002 resolution to invade Iraq. Several Democratic senators who voted for that resolution and who are currently presidential contenders for the 2008 election have expressed regrets; the only candidate who has not done so is Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, amazingly the current Democratic front-runner. ...

As I wrote yesterday, this move by Kucinich puts more heat on Democrats than on the GOP. We know the GOP to be crooked war whores but we expected more from Democrats. Perhaps we should not have. We were taken for granted by a party that drinks from a poisoned well, a party that thinks we have no place to go.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Dennis Kucinich Takes House Floor, Moves to Impeach Dick Cheney for Lying to the American People

This is a smart move on Kucinich's part. There is now no "cover" for the likes of Hilary Clinton who sounds more like a good Republican everyday. Like "triangulation", her position is reduced to a cynical wager that war opponents will choose her in a race against anything the GOP dregs up from amongst its gang of perverts, liars and war whores. No more! A real Democracy will not force upon its sovereign a choice between between the merchants of death and their customers.

Kucinich has drawn a bead on a known criminal, possibly a traitor. Cheney has no hope of shoring up popular support. He is universally reviled, perhaps even by the GOP. One hopes Bush sticks his neck out for Cheney. An extended neck is vulnerable.

This move is, as well, a strong message to Democrats. That message is simply this: we, the people, support Kucinich and we will oppose appeasers who have emasculated the Democratic party and, by doing so, left the American people in the lurch to fend for themselves in Bush's increasingly tyrannical rule.

Kiss-ass Democrats will find Kucinich's move divisive and they would be correct. It will and ought to divide the Democratic party into those who will lead this nation into a new day, what Lincoln would have called a "re-birth of freedom" as opposed to those suck-up Democrats who seem determined to march into hell with George W. Bush and this gang of traitors and liars.

UPDATES

NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD VOTES FOR IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT BUSH AND VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY Tuesday, November 6, 2007, 09:27 AM

November 5, Washington, D.C. The National Lawyers Guild voted unanimously and enthusiastically for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney at its national convention in Washington, DC. The resolution lists more than a dozen high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush and Cheney administration and "calls upon the U.S. House of Representatives to immediately initiate impeachment proceedings, to investigate the charges, and if the investigation supports the charges, to vote to impeach George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney as provided in the Constitution of the United States of America."

The resolution provides for an NLG Impeachment Committee open to all members that will help organize and coordinate events at the local, state, and national level to build public participation in the campaign to initiate impeachment investigation, impeachment, and removal of Bush and Cheney from office without further delay.

The resolution calls on all other state and national bar associations, state and local government bodies, community organizations, labor unions, and all other citizen associations to adopt similar resolutions and to use all their resources to build the campaign demanding that Congress initiate impeachment investigation, impeach, and remove Bush and Cheney from office.

National Lawyers Guild President Marjorie Cohn said, "The war of aggression, the secret prisons, the use of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, the use of evidence obtained by torture, and the surveillance of citizens without warrants, all initiated and carried out under the tenure of Bush and Cheney, are illegal under the U.S. Constitution and international law.”

Founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association, which did not admit people of color, the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state.

"We need to run newspaper ads in the major national and regional papers to energize and recruit concerned persons. This needs lots of money.We need your help now. Click to make an urgently needed donation right now."

- Ramsey Clark

The impeachment movement is at a critical moment. In response to Congressman Dennis Kucinich's attempt to force a discussion and vote on the impeachment of Dick Cheney, the Congressional switchboard was overwhelmed by a flood of calls from impeachment supporters. We must maintain this high level of activity. You can help. ImpeachBush wholeheartedly supports the impeachment of Dick Cheney (House Resolution 333), as well as George W. Bush and all other high officials guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Below is a recap of yesterday's impeachment showdown on the House floor.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, is trying to impeach Vice President Cheney for what he describes as "high crimes and misdemeanors" before the invasion of Iraq.

Right after the proposal was read on the House floor this afternoon, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer stepped forwarded and tried to convince lawmakers to table the bill.

"Impeachment is not on our agenda. We have some major priorities. We need to focus on those," Hoyer told Fox News.

Update at 3:39 p.m. ET: We thought that the vote to table was over -- the clock said 0:00 -- but lawmakers are still switching things around and Kucinich is within a few votes of getting his bill to come up for a vote.

Update at 3:43 p.m. ET: At least 149 Republicans have voted in favor of considering the impeachment resolution. Hoyer's motion, which would have blocked a vote, looks like its going to fail by at least 31 votes.

Update at 3:53 p.m. ET: The 15-minute vote began at 2:53 p.m. ET. It's been an hour, and they're still voting. The tally stands at 170-242 right now. Hoyer needed 218 votes to push the bill off the agenda. He's 72 votes short.(As an OD reader later pointed out, Hoyer was 48 votes short, not 72 as we said at the time. Supporters of the measure had a 72 vote lead. We apologize for our mathematical ineptitude.)

Update at 4:02 p.m. ET: Hoyer's motion failed 251-162. The House is now voting on whether to vote on whether the resolution should be sent to the Judiciary Committee.

Update at 4:25 p.m. ET: The vote to decide to vote (yes, you read that correctly) just ended. By a 218-194 margin, the House has to vote on whether to send the resolution to the Judiciary Committee. That's happening right now.

Update at 4:30 p.m. ET: Perhaps we should pause to explain. When most Republicans unexpectedly -- and on orders of GOP leadership, the AP is reporting -- switched sides and voted against tabling the measure, they essentially forced Democrats to keep talking about it on the floor. Tabling the measure would have killed it.

Debate over Cheney's impeachment is in direct opposition to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's wishes. She has repeatedly said an impeachment of Cheney or President Bush is off the table. Thus, failing to table this measure is a essentially a jab in Pelosi's ribs.

"We're going to help them out, to explain themselves," Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, told the AP of the impeachment's supporters. "We're going to give them their day in court."

Update at 4:32 p.m. ET: The House just voted, 218-194, to send the resolution to the Judiciary Committee. That should end today's debate -- but it does keep the resolution at least technically alive.